


Atychiphobia

by Erandir



Series: Eldarion Surana [2]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Gen, Grey Wardens, Magic, Pacifist Warden, Reluctant Warden
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 18:14:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12041466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erandir/pseuds/Erandir
Summary: Atychiphobia: n. Fear of failure; fear of not being good enough.Eldarion Surana is a pacifist mage with a gift for entropy magic and a loathing for it. Morrigan is not sympathetic.





	Atychiphobia

The wards were about his shoulders like a shroud. A security he had known now for years, walls built to protect himself, and to protect those around him. Walls built of his will, of determination, of promises not meant to be broken.

Those walls dropped, a curtain torn down to reveal the world in full vivid color for the first time in years. He became suddenly vividly aware of every living thing around him. Even with his eyes closed he could feel each life force so strongly he could nearly see them. The grass, the trees, the animals, the people - distant group around the campfire and one closer, two paces away and burning bright, black, calling out to him. 

The sensation, the clarity of his awareness, was so strong he almost became lost in it. Reached out toward that life before him unconsciously before he realized what he was doing.

Then with a strangled gasp he pulled back. The half-formed spell fizzled out and his eyes flew open, revealing the world again in its true form.

And Morrigan, standing two paces away with a scowl on her face. Not just a formless source of power, bright and intoxicating, but a living being. “Concentrate!” she snapped.

Eldarion tensed and withered at the harshness of her tone. “I’m trying,” he protested, but his gaze darted fearfully first to her, then to the distant campfire where Alistair was trying to keep the dog from upsetting the cookpot over the flames.

“How can you be concentrating if you are constantly watching that fool and the dog?” Morrigan demanded.

He winced because it was true, but knowing that made it no easier for him to ignore their presence, however distant. “I don’t want to hurt them on accident,” he said weakly.

The witch scoffed, hands on her hips as she scowled at him, and Eldarion cowered back slightly under the force of her ire. “Is that not the entire purpose of this exercise, and why we are so far removed from them now?” she asked impatiently, like speaking to a stupid child. “You cannot hope to defeat the Blight if you are too afraid to fight it.”

And that was the entirety of their current problem, wasn’t it? A Blight on Ferelden’s doorstep and the only two Wardens around to fight it green as new grass. And one of those made physically ill by the thought of battle.

Eldarion’s ribs still ached, bruises still fading under the armored robes that hung heavy on his shoulders, and seemed to twinge every time he recalled his one and only encounter with darkspawn. The ruins overrun, bodies lifeless and disfigured, propped up like trophies; ground slick with blood and gore, each breath catching in his throat, metallic and thick on his tongue. The orge’s massive hand around his torso, a vice crushing the breath from his lungs, hitting the stone floor, every fiber of his body on fire with pain. Vision obscured by blood as he watched a soldier crushed to death, dragging himself toward the beacon to light it before the pain became too much.

If they failed, the horrors he’d witnessed would spread across Ferelden, across all Thedas. 

“I’m trying,” he said again, quieter this time. 

“Then you are not trying hard enough,” Morrigan scolded, impatient. “The darkspawn will not be defeated by a healer. You have skills in entropy, ‘tis more efficient to develop them than to train you afresh in another school.”

She wielded her words like a dagger, the truth of them lodging painfully in his heart. “I don’t like it.” As though that made any difference.

Morrigan scoffed. “Your cowardly morals will doom the world. The darkspawn do not care for your feelings and they will use this weakness to destroy you. It is time you overcome this childishness, or stop calling yourself a Grey Warden to run like the coward you are.”

He never wanted to be a Grey Warden. He never wanted to fight, to kill, to witness such horrors or feel the weight of responsibility on his back. “I’m not a coward.” The words were a lie, one Morrigan certainly saw through in an instant.

“Your current behavior speaks otherwise,” the witch said. “You came to me for help, and now you will not accept it for fear of your own abilities. If that is not cowardice then tell me what is.” Eldarion had no answer for her. In the heavy silence, Morrigan scoffed in disgust. “Do it again,” she ordered, “And this time do it properly.”

Breath trembling, Eldarion closed his eyes once more and let fall away the wards he had unconsciously pulled about himself again. Concentrate. Teeth dug into his lip and fingers twisted together to keep from quaking. Learn to differentiate those lives he wished to protect, separate them from all else - from the lives he would take. Ignore the butterflies in his stomach and the rising nausea in his throat.

Hurt in order to defend. Kill in order to protect. That was a noble purpose. A purpose he could learn to accept.

Surely it was at least something he could learn to tolerate.


End file.
